crime. The people felt that their magistrate was their accomplice and
their slave, and yet whilst they despised they loved him.

XVII.

"This _fete_ that is preparing for these soldiers," wrote Chenier, "is
attributed to enthusiasm. For my part, I confess I do not perceive this
enthusiasm. I see a few men who create a degree of agitation, but the
rest are alarmed or indifferent. We are told that the national honour is
interested in this reparation,--I can scarcely comprehend this; for,
either the national guards of Metz, who put down the revolt of Nancy,
are enemies of the public weal, or the soldiers of Chateauvieux are
assassins: there is no medium. How, then, is the honour of Paris
interested in _feting_ the murderers of our brothers? Other profound
politicians say, this _fete_ will humiliate those who have sought to
fetter the nation. What! in order to humiliate, according to their
judgment, a bad government, it is necessary to invent extravagances
capable of destroying every species of government--recompense rebellion
against the laws--crown foreign satellites for having shot French
citizens in an _emeute_. It is said, that in every place where this
procession passes, the statues will be veiled:--Ah! they will do well to
veil the whole city, if this hideous orgy takes place; but it is not
alone the statues of despots that should be veiled, but the face of
every good citizen. It will be the duty of every youth in the kingdom,
of every national guard in the kingdom to assume mourning on the day
when the murder of their brothers confers a title of glory on foreign
and seditious soldiers; it is the eyes of the army that should be
veiled, that they may not behold the reward of insubordination and
revolt; it is the National Assembly--the king--the administrators--the
country--that should veil their faces, in order that they may not
become complaisant or silent witnesses of the outrages offered to the
authorities and the country. The book of the law must be covered, when
those who have torn and stained its pages by musket-balls and sabre-cuts
receive the civic honours. Citizens of Paris, honest yet weak men, there
is not one of you who, when he interrogates his own heart, does not feel
how much the country--how much he its child--are insulted by these
outrages offered to the laws,--to those who execute them, and those who
are for them. Do you not blush that a handful of turbulent men, who
appear numerous because they